The Buddy System
by Gaiden
Summary: Shalimar finds a new friend. Adam finds an old one. Mr. Ashlock finds a whole butt-load of trouble.
1. The Aftermath

Disclaimer: don't own it, don't pretend to make money off of it, and don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.  
  
Summary: Shalimar meets another feral, the two bond.  
  
Spoilers: Cliffhanger, season 1 finale  
  
1 Chapter 1  
  
Sanctuary was a quiet place, the Zen gardens, the remote mountaintop location, and the underground chambers generally lent support to this feeling of calm. Calm was relative, though, with Gabriel Ashlock taking over the GSA and Mason Eckhart in stasis, things were tense among Mutant X. Tension was relieved, one way or the other, between the team members and each had their own unique way of dealing with it.  
  
Brennan read, voraciously and constantly. He read everything he could get his hands on: novels, poetry, short stories, plays and non-fiction. He'd plowed his way through the bookshelves in Adam's library and was now slowly working his way through the literature in the Sanctuary computer. He found a quiet corner, near the staircase, and sat down and consumed books for as long as his duties allowed. He tried real hard not to think about what happened, his powers flying out of control, now they were mutating and who knew just how far things would go.  
  
Jesse dealt with the stress another way: he ate. He was constantly hanging around the Sanctuary fridge, consuming whatever he could find. Intellectually, he knew that this was not good; food just released 'feel good' endorphins, but he just couldn't help himself. He compensated for the influx of calories by taking out his frustrations on the treadmill in the gym. Half the time he was tired and sweaty, the other half he spent chomping his way through carrots, celery, lettuce and other 'rabbit food' that Adam kept stocked in the house. Somehow the constant eating helped reinforce his solidity, he felt more solid if he was eating something, and he needed that after what happened.  
  
Emma meditated. She was the queen of meditation. She'd found a new book on yoga and the body during Brennan's plodding through the bookshelves and spent half her time in a self-induced trance, discovering new and interesting things about herself and her new mental powers. Emma wasn't stressed per se; she was just a tele-empath. Her mental state was a reflection of the mental state of her teammates. When she found herself snapping and snarling at people, she had to stop and 'find' the source of the stress and usually went to help whomever it was resolve their issues. Hence she spent a prodigious amount of time in a trance locating and analyzing.  
  
Shalimar was a feral. Stress was easy to resolve. All she had to do was kick some serious ass, preferably on a decent fighter. Failing that, a simulation was the next best thing. Her cat-like instincts were also beginning to take over her actions. She always had a tendency to like her food a bit on the rare side, it was just a cat thing, but not quite so rare that it was still moving. Lately she'd been eyeballing the lab mice that Adam kept for genetic experiments with licked lips. When that happened, she usually found something related to a cow and seared it just long enough to brown the outside and thaw the inside. People suddenly found new places to be when she sat down at the table. She was also slipping into an old habit: she was slowly turning nocturnal. While she was on the street it hadn't really been that bad, people were always up till all hours of the day and night, but when she woke up at Three A.M. fell asleep at noon and woke back up at six or so and went back to sleep at midnight it had a tendency to startle people. Adam said it was just her feral side trying to re-assert itself, so Shalimar just had to live with it, but it was doing some serious damage to her team relations.  
  
'Speaking of team relations,' she thought to herself, 'here comes Mr. I- don't-have-a-clue himself.' She could smell Brennan a mile away, not that it was a bad thing, but she was still aware, painfully, of their 'almost- kiss' in the hallway just before she'd gotten captured by Gabriel. Everything had been perfect, the setting, the mood, and the silence, then Emma had to break in and ruin everything. It wasn't Emma's fault, she rationalized, things just happened. They seemed to be 'just happening' an awful lot, she'd noticed him trying to get her alone several times. She didn't know quite what to do about it, but could almost feel her hackles rising every time he approached her. That wasn't his fault either, she'd been getting that way around Jesse too, even Adam sometimes. It seemed the males of Sanctuary were doing something to set off her defensive instinct that she couldn't quite stop or control. It was causing some friction between everyone. Emma was doing her level best to smooth out the little trouble spots, like the professional peacemaker she was, but Shalimar kept getting a little more and more feral.  
  
"Hey, Shal"  
  
"Good morning Brennan"  
  
"Um, I think its afternoon Shal. You look a little tired, are you OK?"  
  
"Yes," she almost growled "Fine. Did you need something?"  
  
"Uh, well I was just going to see if you wanted to maybe go for a little swim. I mean the water's nice and the weather is pretty perfect, so we'd have some fun."  
  
"I'm half-feline Brennan; do you think cat's like water?"  
  
"Well, some of them do."  
  
"Not this one"  
  
"OK" he huffed a little; Shalimar immediately felt a twinge of conscience. He didn't deserve to be snapped at; he was just trying to help.  
  
"Sorry, Brennan, it's just… well… I'm just feeling a little 'catty' this afternoon all right? No water, no swimming, I'm just going to lay dawn in the sun over there and take a little nap. I'm sure it'll be better when I wake up, OK?" She pointed over to one of the padded benches, one of many scattered about the living area.  
  
"Alright, alright, I understand. I'll see you when you get up, Ok?"  
  
"Fine," she growled, this time unable to suppress the urge to be feral. She went to the bench she'd pointed out, half dappled in a ray of sunlight, and curled up on the edge, within the circle of yellow heat. She snuggled into the hard surface, shifting until she found a comfortable position, bathed in warm sunlight, and promptly fell into a light 'cat-nap', one eye open just in case.  
  
Brennan watched warily as Shalimar settled, cat like, into the bench by the fountain. He made no bones about wanting to try and explore their relationship a little further, and he'd thought that she'd been responding to him, just a little bit, when bam! All of a sudden she was spotting him from a mile away and turning tail as fast as she could. When he did manage to catch her off guard it was almost as if he'd cornered cougar, she did everything she could short of physical violence to discourage his attention. He had no doubts that if he really pushed that she would, without compunction, try to hurt him. He'd spoken to Adam about it, telling him about their 'almost-kiss' and her apparent desire to explore that aspect of their relationship a little further. All Adam had said was that her feral instincts were coming to the fore and she seemed to be responding to the inherent desire not to be cornered by anyone, or anything.  
  
He was sitting, brooding, and watching Shalimar sleep when someone tapped him on his shoulder. He jumped nearly a foot in the air, "Emma! What the crap! You were trying to scare me into next week or something?"  
  
"No, I was just watching you watch Shalimar. You know it's not her fault."  
  
"What's not her fault?"  
  
"She's really getting into this feral thing, Brennan, she can't help it. It's twisting her up inside that she just can't return those feelings. She's feeling cornered, restrained, it's not personal, she just need someone who understands."  
  
"I'm trying to understand, Emma, but it's kinda hard to do that when she won't hold still long enough to talk to anyone. Why does she have to be so damn anti-social?"  
  
"She's a feral, lion if I'm not mistaken, they don't usually like to be around people. She's been a real sport about hanging with us, adopting us as her pack, so to speak, but with this mutation its kinda getting, well, a bit much." Emma sat him down on a rock, by the main fountain and took his hand. "C'mon, I know Shalimar better than anyone, I know she's feeling a little odd right now. We're all feeling a little odd right about now, believe me. You've just got to be patient, OK?"  
  
"Fine," he grumbled, "I don't like it."  
  
"You don't have to like it, Brennan, you've just go to live with it. You gonna be all right?" she asked.  
  
"Yeah, great." 


	2. Mr. Ashlock, I presume?

Disclaimer: don't own it, don't pretend to make money off of it, don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.  
  
Summary: Shalimar meets another feral, the two bond.  
  
Spoilers: Cliffhanger, season 1 finale  
  
1 Chapter two  
  
Gabriel Ashlock walked through the rooms and rooms of stasis pods. He'd accessed the secret records of Genomex a few days ago and was slowly making his rounds of the New Mutants in the pods, finding those who's mutations could prove useful in his battle against the 'normal' people in the world. Most, if not all, of the newly bred mutants were solo powers; they only had one mutation. He had to go further back into the archives, and not so incidentally the pod storage, to find more mutants like himself, with multiple mutations. Curiously enough, many of them were feral, mixed with some other frame shift like telekinesis or elementals.  
  
It seemed as though Genomex had been banking on a market for genetically engineered soldiers. That was before the 'genetic purity' legislation that prevented the deliberate altering of any DNA, be it human or animal, for commercial purposes. The legislation had forced Genomex's experimentation underground and overseas. They proceeded happily in the UK and Europe, until the State Department had put a halt to their 'human cargo transfers'. They'd given up on multiples when time proved to force most of the 'units' to go quietly insane or led to genetic meltdown, cheerfully referred to as 'complications' within the Genomex records.  
  
Gabriel was looking for some of the most stable multiples, feral of course, but with some elemental or psionic gift as well. Mental stability was also welcome, but he could live with sub-dermal governors and restraints if the mutation was worth the risk.  
  
The feral's with the most promise seemed to be stored in one room, referred to as "unit storage chamber 007". He chuckled slightly at the reference, they were indeed British, experimental models bred in the Scottish countryside. There was no stasis pods, it was simply refrigerated, cold, but not so cold as to corrupt the tissue samples. The doors themselves seemed to have not been opened in at least twenty years, the pods were welded shut and sealed from the outside with one solid block of transpari- steel. The precaution interested him; they must be truly dangerous if they had to be sealed into their cold storage. Then again Genomex had listed him as 'highly dangerous and possibly psychotic" so what did they know?  
  
He moved from pod to pod, using his elemental fire to cast a small, but warm fire on top of one pod, so he stayed warm and comfortable in the below- freezing chamber. He scraped away some frost burn from one of the pods, trying to see the face of its occupant. He jumped back, startled at the result. The 'face' of this New Mutant was green. Not paint or makeup, the skin was green. He went around to the others scraping away two decades worth of frost. Some of the others were green, some had no nose or ears, some were completely hairless, and a few had forked tongues drooping listlessly out of slack-jawed mouths. They couldn't be…were they amphibian? This was remarkable. Every feral he'd ever heard of, including himself, were warm-blooded mammals. Cat, dog, rat, or bird, but they were all mammals. He'd never known that Genomex had tried to incorporate reptilian or amphibian DNA to create a feral.  
  
This explained the cold storage, any cold-blooded animal would fall into a torpor if the temperature was dropped low enough. They didn't need true stasis pods, just raw temperature to keep these mutants immobile. He wondered at what powers they had, and immediately began checking the pods for the Genomex prognosis attached to each one.  
  
Disappointingly most, if not all, were in one state or another of genetic meltdown. It seemed cold-blooded and human was not a viable genetic mix. They'd been put into storage for 'research' purposes. Some of the powers were interesting, one of them was half human half Chameleon and could adapt color to match her environment. Another was super strong and also a TK, tele-kinetic. Still others were trackers and used to Jacobson's organ on the tongue to track as well as having some psionic tracking ability. The most interesting was one, Mary Elizabeth Braddock, who was half human and half Gila monster with an elemental bit thrown in for spice. She was not only poisonous, but could also track like a bloodhound, fought like a feral, and was a (semi) human flame-thrower.  
  
It seemed as though this is where Genomex had discovered that feral and fire did not mix. They'd finally managed to get a fairly stable genetic mix, but she'd terrified herself into a hallucinogenic stupor. It also read that she was extremely temperature and light sensitive, requiring a bio- suit to simply exist on a regular basis. This put her on the list of 'high maintenance' and she was quietly 'scrapped'.  
  
He considered the risks of bringing her out of storage, she was by far the most useful of the amphibious/reptilian mixes, but discarded that idea immediately. The temptation wasn't worth the risk. He extinguished the small fire that had warmed the room considerably, and left.  
  
Fortunately for his peace of mind it was too dark for him to see the little puffs of condensation that were forming on the newly scraped away surface of Miss Mary Elizabeth's pod. It seems as though that little bit of fire had been enough to begin to wake this particular reptilian. For all of Gabriel's genetically acquired genius he'd failed to heed the simplest of the Genomex warnings. Written in red and yellow block letters, directly on the face of the pod, was this warning: KEEP AT A TEMPERATURE OF 25F AT ALL TIMES.  
  
It was a fight to consciousness, but it was a battle she fought all the way. She slowly opened her eyes, surveying her surroundings. There was nothing but scraped away frost covering her face shield. Panicked, she reached for the mutant power that both scared and fascinated her. Fire erupted from her mouth, melting the transpari-steel face guard. Terrified by her own abilities, she leaped out of the pod and into the chill of the cold storage room. Shivering, her steps became slower and slower as the cold gradually seeped back into her bones and slowed down her heart rate and respiration. Desperate, she reached again.  
  
The solid steel door melted just enough to let her contort her body out of the storage room. Warmth struck her, she shivered over to the ventilation system prying off the cover of the grate. She slipped into the small opening, her genetically engineered body compressing itself to fit the hole. She crawled, following her instincts and thermal vision towards the furnace. She curled into a fetal ball, huddling as close to the heat as possible.  
  
Slowly the heat seeped into her system. She was weak with a lack of food and residual cold, but was aware of her surroundings. She wanted out, now. Up was a good direction, she decided, and followed the ventilation shafts up to the roof. Once out of the building, she froze, blinded by the blazing midday sun. The roof of Genomex was aluminum, heated to almost burning by the sun. She curled up, in the very center of the roof, determined to absorb as much heat as possible. She slept, weak, but free.  
  
Night fell. The cold woke her. She could see the red-orange heat of the roof dissipating into the atmosphere. Panicked at the loss of her heat, she scanned the lot of Genomex for an alternate source. A truck delivering food, not cold but hot for the cafeteria, was parked in the Genomex lot. It wasn't heated, but was insulated. That suited her purposes nicely. Muscles warm from her basking on the roof, she moved like lightening. Leaping from the roof to the fire escape to the truck top. She waited for the trucker to finish unloading, then quietly slipped into the back as he shut the hatch. She lay in wait, consuming the leftovers in the truck with an appetite not quenched in two decades. Food and heat was all she needed for right now, her strength would return. She knew the scent of the man who'd put her to sleep. He wouldn't survive the month, not if she had anything to say about it. 


	3. Author's Note

Author's note: 

It was my understanding that Shalimar's feral DNA was that of a Mountain Lion, or cougar, which IS a solitary animal. It has been brought to my attention that this is not the case. I apologize for the mix-up. Bear with it please; it works for the stage I'm setting with this little story and it doesn't seem to terribly important in the long run.


	4. The Windy City

Disclaimer: don't own it, don't pretend to make money off of it, don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Summary: Shalimar meets another feral, the two bond.

Spoilers: Cliffhanger, season 1 finale: A Breed Apart

Chapter three 

"Hey!" Adam called down the hallway, "You guys better come here, I think I've got something." 

Impatient for action, the Mutant X team assembled quickly. Jesse, Shalimar, Emma, and Brennan were almost chomping at the bit for any remote sign of activity for the newly 'restructured' Genomex.

"Is it Gabriel?"  Asked Brennan anxiously.

"No," Adam shook his head, "at least I don't think so." He projected his computer screen onto the wall beside them. It was a police generated three-dimensional map of the greater Chicago area. He motioned to a series of red dots marked in the south-side shipping district of the windy city. "We've had a number of break-ins and thefts reported in the greater Chicago area. They seem to all be of food and clothing; just enough to keep a person alive and the police have spotted signs of habitation."

"How can you be sure that it's a New Mutant and not a drifter?"  asked Shalimar, "That seems an awful lot like a simple squatter."

"Because when the police went to apprehend the squatter he or she did this to the roof of Coleman Dry Storage" he brought up a picture of a melted roof plate. 

"Ouch," Jesse winced, "was it a fire elemental?"

"Maybe," Adam leaned back a this desk, "the report also states that whomever it was that was 'squatting' in the warehouse was so fast and strong that the police were unable to keep up, it seems as though our mutant friend was making death defying leaps and acrobatic jumps." 

"A feral?" questioned Shalimar anxiously.

"Maybe," Adam sighed, "I'm thinking that there's more than one, possibly Gabriel has some people out there, possibly it's just a New Mutant that's managed to escape in the chaos, possibly it a member or members of The Strand trying to set up an ambush. Who knows, but we need to be there to get this under control. Brennan, you and Jesse take the Double Helix. See what you can do."

"Hey wait!" Shalimar protested, "what about me?"

"It's too risky, we can't afford to have a fire elemental go after you, Shal, you know what'll happen then."

"And how do you expect to apprehend a feral without me? There no way that's gonna happen. You could be walking straight into an ambush you need better than even odds."

"Shal, c'mon everyone knows fire and feral don't mix. We don't want you to get hurt."  Emma tried to soothe away the hurt feelings, unsuccessfully. 

"The hell with that, you need me, unless you really want to get your butts kicked to the curb by another feral who won't be nice on you." Shal bared her teeth to the projected image; "I'm going with you."

"Fine," Adam conceded, "just take Emma with you in case things don't go as planned, alright?"

"Fine" there were nods all around. 

"Off with you!"

"Jesse, you mind grabbing me something to drink, I'm getting a little thirsty up here" Brennan called from the pilot's chair. 

"Sure thing, Bren, what you want?"

"Doesn't matter, just as long as it's wet"

"OK," Jesse got up from his passenger seat in the rear of the aircraft and fetched a diet Pepsi from the in-cockpit fridge. He went up to the pilot's chair, to bring this new bounty to Brennan. 

"Hey," Brennan tugged on his shirt as he handed him the can. "C'mere"

"What?" 

"It's Shal, listen, I know how scared she gets of this fire thing alright. You mind helping me keep an eye on her? The last thing we need is her getting even more wierded out, OK? Don't let her go off by herself, keep eyes out for this elemental person"

"Hey, Bren, don't worry OK? Shal can take care of herself and Emma's gonna be here with her new sleepy-time thing. One head-bolt from Emma and they'll be sleeping it off for the next week." 

"I know it's…"

"You care about her, man. We all do too. Don't worry, everything'll be fine."               

 "Yeah," Brennan turned his attention back to the flight plan; he landed on the roof of the Coleman Dry Storage building. The missing roof plating was obvious, melted all the way around the edges. The owner had tried to cover it up with a green tarp, but the wind had pulled up, exposing the interior structure to the roving Mutant X team. One by one they dropped down form the increasingly hot roof, onto the dark, but still stifling interior. 

"Man, are you sure the roof didn't melt by itself? It's gotta be a million degrees in here."  Jesse wiped a bead of sweat off of his head. "I'm roasting"

"She was here," said Shalimar, sniffing "I can smell it"

"She? Are you sure?" asked Emma.

"Yeah, she was camping out right over there, by the exhaust fan." Shalimar balanced carefully and then jumped, using her feral abilities. She landed on the tiny ledge next to the fan and dropped on all fours, sniffing. "Yeah, look at this. Food scraps, plastic wrappers, water… she was definitely camping out here." 

Brennan looked away from the sight of Shalimar on her hands and knees, tracking like the feral cat she occasionally was. Emma put her hand on his shoulder and whispered "That's Shal, Brennan, she's a feral. Even more now than she was before. That's just the way it is."

"Yeah," he swallowed. Suddenly his comm ring went off. "Adam, this is Brennan, what's up?"

"Did you find anything?"

"Yes," broke in Jesse, "it's hotter than Hades in here. How anyone lived in this roof I've got no idea."

"We've found food scraps and water," Shalimar alighted back on the platform with the rest of the team, "I got a scent trail leading out of the exhaust fan. Looks like she made a run for it."

"She? Is there only one?"

"As far as I can tell. I don't know about Emma."

"Emma?"

"Hold on," she closed her eyes, "Yeah, as far as I can tell there was only one"

"OK, Shal track that scent. Emma, go with her. Brennan, you and Jesse follow them in the Helix. Keep an eye out."

   "Hey, wait a minute; you're letting Shal go after this fire elemental by herself? No way, let me go or Jesse. Some one's got to protect her."

That little speech earned him the wrathful stares from both females. From Sanctuary Adam winced at his unfortunate choice of language. "The girls will be fine Brennan, go to the Helix."

"But,"

"Go, Brennan" 

Angrily Brennan cut off communications and stalked over to the Helix; Jesse, giving Emma a knowing look, before heaving a sigh and following him. Shalimar made a nasty face at Brennan's back, which Emma had to stifle a laugh at, even though it wasn't really funny. Shalimar motioned her to follow. 

"Where are we going?"

"Up," Shalimar pointed at the roof of the adjacent storage building, "I think that she was looking to escape out the top, maybe she's got some other hiding places near the waterline."

"Ok," Emma turned on her comm, "Brennan, did'ya gets that?"

"Yeah, I copy" He grumbled, "The Helix is yours to command." 

"C'mon!"

Shalimar was much quicker then Emma at jumping fences and leaping tall buildings in a single bound. She was a little more pre-occupied with tracking though, Emma was also. She was using her newly burgeoning psionic abilities to track the new mind-signature of the mutant. There was something odd about this one, she 'felt' strange, scared. Not like a superficial startled, but truly, deeply terrified of something.

"Hey Shal"

"Yeah?"

"I think we want to go this way" Emma pointed towards a storage facility several blocks in the opposite direction that Shalimar was going. Shalimar stopped, sniffing around the area she was heading. 

"Are you absolutely sure? The scent trail is leading straight towards the water." 

"Yes," Emma said cautiously, "I'm feeling something, she's …scared"

"Well the police just busted into her hideout, she's got every right to be scared"

"Not that kind of scared, she's … I don't quite know how to explain it, she's like wild animal scared."

"Like fight or flight reactions?"

"Yeah," Emma said slowly, "I don't think she's hostile, but she'll be really evasive. She doesn't want to be found."

"OK" From the shadows of Food Lion cold storage facility, Mary Elizabeth watched warily. Things had been going fine as the feral had been following the misleading scent trail she'd set. The other one, with the glowing forehead, had stopped that. They were heading straight for her. Relying on an old reptilian strategy she remained completely motionless. They kept approaching, closer and closer. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it, and if she could so could the feral. 

In a flash of movement quicker than the human eye, or even a feral eye, could follow she scuttled up the side the building and bolted across the roof. The chase was on. From roof top to roof top the two females ran behind her. Her side began to ache quickly, she wasn't built for endurance running, and the others were. She made a split second decision, jumping to the lot and heading back for the water. There was no way that any mammal could keep up with her in the water. 

She was almost to the waterline when something from above illuminated the lot, temporarily blinding her. Instinctively she leaped to the roof away from the light, trying to get to the water. Luck was not with her, the flimsy aluminum of the Food Lion cold storage gave way. Like any good feral she tried to regain her balance, but failed, and she fell into the top of the cold storage facility. 

Brennan watched the feral fall; she disappeared into the depths of the storage warehouse. "Brennan to everyone: she's fallen through the roof of the Food Lion Cold storage building. Repeat she's fallen through. I'm setting the Helix on the lot. Wait for Jess and me. We can all go in together."

"Wilco, Shalimar out." She and Emma leaned on the side of the building catching their breath. 

"Did you see her move? That's not human!"

"She's not human, she's a New Mutant. There was something funny about her though, I've never seen any feral move like that. It was… kinda odd."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Brennan, there's just something different about this one. Be careful going in there. She's not hostile, but she's scared and probably hurt too. Let me handle this one, Ok?"

"Fine," he rubbed her shoulder affectionately, "just be careful, OK Emma?"

"Yeah, right. Ok let's go."

Mary Elizabeth was hurt, these humans had hurt her. She was cold, rapidly losing strength and agility to the refrigerated interior. Her front limb was broken, several of her ribs as well. She found a corner, in the strongest light her vision found and huddled around herself, trying to absorb heat form her meager surroundings. Her tongue flicked out and back in, tasting the air with its forked tip. Every breath was painful. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye; they were here to finish her off. Mary Elizabeth took a defensive stance, or as much of one as her broken limb could allow and hissed, baring her enlarged venomous teeth. This lady wasn't going down without a fight.   


	5. Its A Good Morning Beautiful Day!

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Chapter Four

In the dead center of the Food Lion cold storage warehouse, lay the feral whose 'survival instincts' had led to her discovery by police and ultimately by Adam. Emma approached her with care; she was hissing and bearing a wicked looking set of teeth. 

"Hey, it's Ok. I'm not going to hurt you. Look at me." When the cornered feral made eye contact with Emma, she gently released the mental 'sleepy bolt' in her direction. The trapped feral keeled over without a murmur of protest.

"Nicely done, Emma." Adam's voice was slightly hollow, coming all the way from Sanctuary. "Be careful, she's injured. Let's get her to Sanctuary. Good work all of you."

"Whoa, look at this!" Shalimar had been first to get to the fallen New Mutant. 

"What is it?" Adam asked over the comm.

"She's reptilian, or at least partly. Look at her tongue, it's forked."

"She's Reptilian?"

"It looks like it," Brennan knelt down next to Shalimar. "And someone hasn't been taking very good care of her, she's skin and bones."

"Get her out of the cold; I think I can fix her."

"Fix her? Why do you need to fix her? What's wrong with her?"

"It's a long story; just get her out of the cold. If it's who I think it is, we've just made a very important friend. Bring her back to Sanctuary ASAP."

"Sure thing"

Upon the arrival of the Double Helix to Sanctuary, Adam was waiting. Almost before Brennan finished the landing procedure Adam had climbed in to the crew area. Sure enough, as he expected, Miss Mary Elizabeth was curled up in Shalimar's lap. The body heat of a feral was greater than that of a regular human being. Shalimar looked questioningly at Adam. At the first glance his guess, because guess it was, was confirmed. This was the Mary Elizabeth Braddock that he'd known in his old days at Genomex.  

"It's ok, Shal. You and Liz are going to get along great. She just needed to borrow your body heat."

"You know her?" asked Jessie.

"I know her; she's one of Genomex's most spectacular examples of what not to do with genetics. Anyone ever wonder how Genomex figured out that fire and feral don't mix? They tried to create a Salamander, a mythical lizard that could create fire."

"Oh my God! She's the fire elemental?" exclaimed Shalimar. 

"Yes. She was one of the most innovative genetic creations of Genomex and she's deathly terrified of herself. I treated her once, a long time ago, her entire group was experiencing a genetic meltdown. The other amphibian/reptile mixes were pretty crude; their genes were just dissolving, but Liz was the sturdiest of the lot. They'd finally managed to get a decent cold blooded sample and had integrated it into her systems flawlessly. It was brilliant, especially," he said with a self-deprecating laugh "twenty years ago when all we had were old style gel electrophoresis and truly decrepit computers." He shook his head "Brilliant, brilliant work and they had to go screw with it and try the fire element thing too. She's one hell of a spitfire. Pun intended."

"Damn." Brennan watched her disbelievingly "Did they pod her?" 

"No," Adam stroked her curly mop of hair "Just stuck the whole bunch of them in a glorified refrigerator. Any reptile will go into torpor if the temperature is cold enough and if I remember correctly she was, or rather is, extremely light, temperature, and sound sensitive." 

"Then how did she get out?" 

"I think," Adam's voice hardened "that Mr. Ashlock had been messing around in Genomex's pod storage. C'mon, help me get her to the lab."

A day later Shalimar was sitting in the lab, Mary Elizabeth Braddock, or Liz as Adam called her, had not yet woken up. She was reading the latest issue of Field and Stream and wondering at the stupidity of humans that thought they need all that crap to catch and shoot an animal. It was easy, all you had to do was track them, catch them, and kill them. She didn't understand why normal people didn't get that concept.

"uhhhh"

"Hey, take it easy, all right? You had quite a fall." Shalimar got up, and walked over to the bed. She slid an arm around her shoulders and helped her sit up; gingerly the New Mutant took heed of her surroundings. 

"Who the hell are ye and what in the name o' the good Lord am I doing here?"

"My name is Shalimar Fox and you were injured when you fell through the roof of a cold storage warehouse in Chicago. We brought you here to heal. This place is called Sanctuary."

"Uck, that's right. I remember. Nice work, lass, but if I hanna been half-outa me mind from that damn fire you wouldna got me." She flicked out her long, black tongue; tasting the air around her.

Shalimar chuckled, "You sound like Scotty saying that the Warp Engines 'canna hold any longer!'"

"Well that's 'cause I am." She said indignantly, giving Shalimar an amused look, "Scottish, tha' is not the most excellent Mr. Scott. Me name's Mary Elizabeth."

"I know," Shalimar smiled, "Adam told us about you."

"Hey now, who be tellin' tales on me?" She sounded vaguely annoyed, but was more interested in seeing if she could still move without wincing. 

"I am" Adam walked in, his eyes twinkling, "Welcome to Sanctuary Liz. Long time no see."

"Aye, and how long, may I ask, have I been out o' th' loop?" She rolled her head, wincing at the popping sounds.

"From what I can tell, almost twenty years." Adam told her, apologetically.

"Damn" she tried to get up, but her golden eyes went wide and she reluctantly sat back down. "Got a lot to catch up on then"

"Not right now," Adam said firmly, "You need to heal. If I didn't know your genetic structures as well as I do, I'd think it was a miracle you survived. But I do know it, and no matter what you say you need to rest."

"Asshole," She swore pleasantly. "You always were such a prick."

"So you've said. I assume you and Shalimar have introduced yourselves. She'll show you around and help you meet and greet the rest of us." Adam smiled wickedly.

"God bless there's more o' ye? And I thought one was bad enough. Shalimar, same me" she made a dramatic gesture and pretended to collapse on the cot. The effect was spoiled somewhat by the fact that she had to edge her way down the bed slowly.

"I wouldn't worry; they're not all like him." Shalimar winked, she could see what Adam said about them getting along well. 

"I'm flattered ladies. Are you still nocturnal, Liz?"

"Does the sun still rise in the east?"

"I'll take that as a yes." He grinned at Shalimar, "Looks like you've got some company on those long night shifts." He reached over to tousle Liz's hair and darted out as she swatted at his hand and scowled.

"Great, I could use it." Shalimar slid an arm around Liz's waist and helped her to her feet. "C'mon Jessie will raid the fridge when he sees you. You look like a damn skeleton."

"Ach, well that be the price for not eating in two decades. Lead on Miss Shalimar. I suspect that I could use it."

Shalimar was right. One look at the way-too-skinny reptilian and Jesse was throwing open 'his' refrigerator doors to feed Liz whatever and how ever much of anything that she desired. Once seated, introduced, and eating everyone was immediately curious about Liz and her past connection to Adam. 

"So what did you guys do anyway?" Emma asked eagerly, Adam had never been very chatty about his connections with Genomex. Having an independent source of information was a rarity and Emma was determined to make the most of it.

"Well, it depends. How much do ye already know?"

"Next to nothing, he's not very proud of having been a part of Genomex. We've been here almost a full year and we've just learned about him and the stasis pods and sub-dermal governors." Shalimar was seated next her on the sofa. Brennan was seated on one wingback chair, Emma in the other. Jesse was stretched out on the floor of the 'study'.

"Well hell. He finally got his head turned around straight then did he? Damn the Genomex bastards. He's right to screw over the lot of them. Well once upon a time, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away Genomex was a legitimate biological research centre an' a very pretty little thin' on a burgeoning geneticists resume, understand? Now, our curly haired friend was as burgeoning as any geneticist in the lot, he was given the rather unenviable task of charting the genetic meltdown of a series of genetic mistakes, more commonly referred to as my platoon. Now, as of the 'units' under his tender care, I was the sturdiest of the squad. I'm a trained combat trauma medic, if ye were at all interested, an' we took it upon ourselves to try an' save as many as possible. Of the thirty-six units undergoing genetic meltdown twelve survived the 'restructuring' process." 

"We tried" Adam said softly, from the doorway into the study.

"Aye, tha' we did." She flicked her tongue in and out rapidly. "We an' the other two of the stooges Larry and Mason, we tried. Then that idiot Ashcroft got loose an' the whole thin' was put inna cold storage for 'the duration'. He's loose again ain't he? That's how I got out. I could smell him. Genius I.Q. and everything, but the damn man can't read a two-penny sight tha' says not to warm up the pods." 

"You know Ashcroft?" Brennan asked.

"Son, I trained Gabriel Ashcroft." She gave Brennan a rueful stare, "He mighta been the first 'new mutant' that the idiots grew from scratch, but the rest of us had to go thru' it th' old fashioned way."

"It was Mason Eckhart wasn't it? He let Ashcroft loose, didn't he? Then he couldn't control it so Adam created the governors and the pods. He caught Gabriel, and he got the credit for it and scrapped the genetic re-sequencing program to make New Mutants."

"Well now Adam, ye know how to pick 'em don't ye? She's sharp as a bloody tack." She made eye contact with the now somber leader of Mutant X, and then turned back to Emma's question. "Yes, lass, tha's th' way it went down. After we got 'stored' I suspect that's when Curly here understood what was goin' on. I dinna ken what happened next, but …"

"I waited," Adam spoke softly "Learning as much as I could. Setting up the code that erased the computer's memory when I finally left. Skimming away money and supplies from Genomex to found Sanctuary."

"Then ye did the smart thing." She grinned lopsidedly at him, "Always was the smartass." He walked over behind the sofa and put both hands on her shoulders. She slipped her own up and squeezed them. "Now some idiot's let Gabriel loose again hasn't they?" 

"Yes," said Shalimar "They're called 'The Strand' and they popped him from pod storage a few weeks ago. He took Genomex over from Eckhart." Shalimar looked a little sheepish, "They even managed to abduct me long enough for Gabriel to try and work his magic on me. But Brennan and Jesse and Emma got me back."

"Ye're lucky then. He don't give up easy." She sighed and gave Adam another squeeze, "Well that's enough o' this little heart to heart. Any more saccharine and I'll be sick. Besides that, I'm getting' cold again. Have ye got a heat lamp Adam?"

"Yes, but I think I can do better than a heat lamp. If' you'll let me experiment on you yet again, I'm pretty sure I can fix your genetics so you're a little more comfortable in the world." He massaged her shoulders slowly, working out some of the stress from her telling the story. She may not let it show, but she was deeply affected by it; Masons deceit, the death of her squad, and her placement in 'storage'.

"Fix me?" She was hissing contentedly under his ministrations, "I thought this was a good as it got." 

"Let's just say genetic technology has come a way in the last twenty years."

"Aye, but lets also say that a few things have remained the same." She smiled at him, letting her golden eyes twinkle in his dark ones. 

He twinkled back, "That they have, Liz, that they have."        


	6. Mr. Ashlock's Success

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Gabriel Ashcroft was a patient man. Most of the time. Having spent most of his adult life in stasis, he had developed a wait and see policy towards many things. When he went back to pod storage to investigate the contents, discovering the evidence of Miss Mary Elizabeth's escape route was not on his list of 'wait and see' objectives. Finding out that it had been his own stupid fault that she'd woken up was also not on the top of his list of priorities. Neither had been hearing about the daring capture of the Chicago squatter, hours before he had planned to dispatch his own team of Strand members to 'investigate' the disturbance. Things were not going his way. This was distressing. 

Sociopath that he was, his only concerns were for his own well being, and the well being of his mission; namely to eradicate average humans off the face of the planet and create a master race in the labs of the GSA. The escape of Miss Mary Elizabeth and her undoubted defection to Mutant X was a problem. Therefore it must be solved, one way or the other. His favorite plan, one that he was now putting into action, was to perpetrate some  heinous crime on the civilian populace and wait for his targets to show up to defend the worthless cretins from subjugation by the master race. Seated in his stronghold in the Genomex laboratory he watched on closed circuit TV as his agents went into action.

The air sucked out of the building with a sticky, slurping sound as the firebomb of one of his elementals exploded in the Redbird Mall complex. On the flat screen digital monitor, Gabriel admired the exquisite graphics cards he had seen to installing, the pictures were incredibly accurate. He could even see the shock on the patrons faces as the glass in the windows melted away. He had one teek, a telekinetic, hold off the police and rescue crews. They held the doors shut so tightly that no one could get in or out. Then the real fun began. The news cameras recorded every screech and shout for posterity, as Gabriel waited for the inevitable arrival of Mutant X. 

He wasn't disappointed; they blew a hole in the roof, overpowering the telekinesis of his agents, and landed the still invisible jet fighter in the main atrium of the flaming mall. The whine of the jet engines was audible; he wondered, absently, how the government was going to 'doctor' this report for the media. 

The members of The Strand jumped into action, Gabriel sat up and began to take note on the effectiveness and enthusiasm of each of his people. He had sent five, altogether, some mutants weaker than others. The elemental, "Brennan" his genetically enhanced mind spit out at him absently, came out of the cockpit first. His indoor electrical storm was quite impressive, it disabled two of Gabriel's lesser Mutants and severely damaged a third. The next out of the invisible jet was the other man, Jesse; he phased out a wall and began to escort the survivors into the waiting arms of the rescue personnel. Damn Adam and his bleeding heart humanitarian sensibilities. Could he not see that Mutantkind was destined to rule over the lesser beings in the world? 

The next one out was the telempath, Emma de Lauro. She had a peculiar power, the bolts of empathic lightening was putting his agents asleep faster than anything he'd ever seen. It didn't affect his elementals, though, he'd shielded them himself before they'd been sent on the mission. The building began to fall apart around them, the fire intensifying on all sides. Most of the people were out already, but not all, and the damn idiots kept on trying to save lives. The Mutant X humanitarians couldn't save them all, not unless they got rid of the elemental source of the fire. 

There was only one thing that could stop a fire elemental once they really got out of hand, and, curiously enough, that was the fire itself. Just because they could control it, didn't mean they were immune to its effects. Although a fire elemental could call it down to shield himself, the greatest danger to the elemental was the elemental power itself. Just like Brennan was no more immune to electric shock than the average person, so too were fire elementals no more immune to the fires they called then an ordinary human being. 

When Mary Elizabeth waltzed out into the inferno Gabriel was surprised, according to his information, his memory, her internal temperature was too dependant on the environment for her to survive in this kind of heat. There was no way she could stay out here for long. She moved like greased lightening, a combination of her terror of fire and the heat fueling her muscles. Still, even her abilities were limited because of her fear; the terror would consume her sooner or later. 

Sooner was the operative word, she curled into a fetal ball and howled her fear to the sky. Gabriel gave the order to move in and re-capture her. His fire elementals, the only operating agents he had left, moved in for the final blow. They recoiled in howling pain, each one alight in a wash of blue-white flame. 

"So," he mused, "We are not as helpless as we seem, Miss Mary Elizabeth. Fascinating." Oblivious to the fact that the human torches on his screen were not only living breathing people, but living breathing people whom he was responsible for, Gabriel watched in detached analysis of her apparent abilities. Evidently the outcome of her succumbing to fear had not only been anticipated by Adam, it was carefully orchestrated. The telempath, Miss deLauro, was right by the feral elemental within seconds of the incendiary breath. She ushered her to the now visible jet, completely supporting the weight of the smaller woman. The other two followed, now that the elementals were no longer controlling the flames, they had jumped out of the carefully chosen area of infiltration. The group worked like any good, highly-trained commando team to evacuate the area and extricate themselves without any harm to their person or their equipment. 

Gabriel nodded, as if confirming something to himself, and turned to his top associates standing near his new desk. "Well?"

"Sir, with all due respect, that was a massacre! There was no way our people were prepared to handle that situation without proper backup. What in the name of God were you thinking?"

"God?" Gabriel asked smoothly, "God has everything to do with this, my friend. I hope most sincerely that you're not using my name in that manner. I am your God, Mr. Kessler, make no mistake about that. Gods must not always be kind and benevolent, this was necessary to determine the relative strength and capacity of the Mutant X team. I assure you that the sacrifice of the Strand was not in vain. Need you any more information? If I explained every thought in my head to you, we'd be standing here all night. Do not question your God, Mr. Kessler, the plan will be revealed in my own good time." 

Mr. Kessler gulped and bowed slowly, "Forgive my indiscretion"

"You are forgiven," Gabriel said mildly, his mind elsewhere "but don't let it happen again." The threat needn't have been said, Mr. Kessler was already shaking in his well polished wing tips. Gabriel gazed once more on the polished screen, and smiled softly to himself. Success was a relative measure, and this, in his opinion, was a success.

Adam was beside himself, he couldn't believe he had allowed Liz to go out there. When she'd been explaining her necessity to go on this mission and that she could handle the chaos of the flames and all of that he'd agreed with her, but listening to Emma trying, unsuccessfully trying, to calm her down was too much for Adam to bear. Shalimar, left behind because it was well known that she couldn't handle flames, was pacing a hole in the carpet frustrated beyond belief that she couldn't be there for her new friend. She was growling, and for once made no attempt to stifle the sound. 

"Emma?"

"I'm working on it, damnit, will you relax?" frustration and leaked off fear made he voice break over the sound system. Inside the cock pit, Emma was trying with all her empathic might to calm Liz down. The feral/elemental mix was currently hyperventilating into a neat little brown paper bag, her fear levels so far off of Emma's empathic scale that she was wondering how Liz could sit there and breathe with relative calm and not be crawling up the sides of the cockpit. 

"Hey are you all right?" It was Jesse, looking at Emma with concern. She suddenly realized that the lightheadedness she was experiencing wasn't a reaction to lack of blood sugar, but that she too had begun to hyperventilate. 

"Yeah," Emma concentrated on her breathing; it slowed and then went back to a controlled normal. "Thanks. I've never felt this kind of leakage before. If it's affecting me this badly, God knows how Liz is coping with it."

He looked warily at the elemental, now almost catatonic from ruthlessly controlled fear. "I don't think she is coping with it. I mean look at her. She's not moving."

"That's better than the alternative. Do you think we could handle a feral gone completely feral? Not in here. It's too close. She's controlling it. Thankfully." Emma bent over, putting her head between her knees and breathing deeply in and out. "Wow, I don't feel too good." 

"Here," Jesse pulled her into his arms and started rubbing her back in smooth, long circles. "Breathe with me, OK? In and out, nice and easy, in and out."  

"In and out," Emma repeated shakily. She was trembling, shaking with a fear not her own. Slowly she relaxed into Jesse's arms; he was warm, supportive and so strong she could cry. She did, finally breaking down and crying softly into his shoulder. He supported them both, carefully maneuvering her to one of the cockpit chairs and pulling her gently on to his lap. She quietly sobbed her way home to Sanctuary, wrapped in the comfort of Jesse's arms.

Adam was waiting when they got home. Taking notice of Emma long enough to ascertain that she was being taken care of, then racing into the cockpit to see Liz. Shalimar was two steps behind, having taking the time to set Emma and Jesse on the sofa with a cup of her favorite tea, brewed while the Helix was in the air. 

"Hey" came the rusty, slightly thick response to Adam's frantic greeting. "I'm Ok, how's Mademoiselle Freud? She's not used to this, not like me."

"Emma's Ok," said Shalimar "she's calming down on the sofa with Jesse"

"Good idea." Up came the paper bag again, as she winced and closed her eyes to another wave of terror. "You mind?"

Shalimar didn't quite understand, but Adam did, he scooped her up and carried her to the study, sat down, and ran his hands through her hair while rocking her slightly back and forth. Shalimar came too, half-mad with frustration over the whole situation.

"Hey Shal,"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you go help Brennan get everything together, Ok? We've kinda left him in the dust." Adam gave her an emphatic 'look' over the top of Liz's head. "Find something for he and you to do, it might be a while before Emma and Liz are back up to steam."

"OK"

Shalimar went back out to the hanger, helping Brennan re-fuel and re-equip the Helix. They did it after every mission to make sure they could leave at a moment's notice. 

"Damn" Brennan swore quietly, "You know, I might not get along with her too well, but there isn't anyone who deserved that."

"Amen" Shalimar took another few second to digest what he said, "Why don't you like her?"

'Because she's got your admiration and respect,' floated on the tip of Brennan's tongue, but he didn't say it. "I didn't say I didn't like her. We just rub the wrong way I guess. I mean it's not that I really don't like her as a person or anything, it's just, well, we've been a team together for a long time and the way Adam's talking he wants her to join up with us, and I guess that makes me a little uncomfortable"

"I can see that. After all, it was kinda hard taking in a supposedly ex-thief who can hurl lightening bolts from his fingers." She smiled at him "Just give her a chance, Brennan; she knows what she's doing. And that's coming from me, all right? I'm the queen of skeptics."

"OK," he gave her a classily charming grin "but only if it comes from you" She gave a very unladylike growl and pretended to swipe at his head. Brennan ducked, laughing, glad that things between them had at least reached the friendly stage again.    

     
 


	7. Settling In

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Liz swiftly fell into rhythm of life in Sanctuary. Staying up late on the 'night shift' with Shalimar, teasing Jesse about his eating habits, participating in mandatory meditation sessions with Emma, and kicking Brennan's overconfident bottom when he challenged her to a Kendo match. It was as if she'd always been there. 

Curiously enough despite the almost twenty year difference in age, not including the two decades in 'storage', Shalimar and Liz were fast friends. The older feral seemed to understand that sometimes it wasn't so much her presence that was important, but it was that her actions made the actions of Shalimar seem more 'normal'.  Liz didn't think it was odd to be nocturnal, have cravings for very 'rare' beef, keeping one eye open while sleeping or moving faster than the human eyes could follow. It was 'normal'. This confirmation of normalcy was an important validation for Shalimar and it rubbed off onto the other members of Mutant X as well. Jesse quit wincing when Shalimar and Liz set out to cook something, Emma decided that normal was as normal does, and didn't interfere with some of their more interesting habits, and Brennan and Adam, well they just acted as if nothing was different even if the pair of them were hanging from the ceiling or something else equally unique. Liz and Shalimar spent their nights monitoring the computers and watching old re-runs of Star Trek: The Original Series and Rugby, which Liz found, to her delight, was placed on late night sports programs. Bloody, violent sporting events and cheesy, sci-fi drama seemed to suit them both. It was quite satisfactory.  

Of course to be friends with Shalimar inevitably led to a friendship of sorts with the resident psychic, Emma. That relationship was a little more tenuous. Emma knew just how emotionally jumpy Liz had a tendency to be, having experienced the full force of it firsthand. There was a certain amount of tension between them. Enough that both women danced in very diplomatic circles around each other, but not enough that Shalimar felt as if she was pushing them on each other. It was relaxing, Shalimar knew that the two people that she spent the most time with understood and accepted her occasional eccentricity and they accepted each other. The three formed a kind of trio, Emma slowly staying up later and later to enjoy their company and the other two waking up earlier so she wasn't a zombie the next morning. Curiously enough, the guys let it be. It was hard enough when the girls had been outnumbered, but now that the odds were even, more fun happened. It would have been a lot more fun if Brennan and Adam hadn't been such lazy butts and spent all of their time in the lab, but life couldn't be perfect.   

Jesse adored her. When Liz was awake she was giving him lessons on emergency first-aid and trauma medicine. He actually had an understanding of the subject, enough to realize that she was so way beyond expert that he felt privileged to learn from her. In the meantime, during the long hours of the night when it was just Liz and Shalimar in the darkened Sanctuary, Liz spent hours going over medical journals and treatises to update on the newest advancements in trauma science.  

Brennan was reserved. After getting his butt whipped by Liz in the Kendo match he was sure he could at least given a good showing in, he kept his distance. It wasn't really fair she'd beaten him; she was just coming off a fright that should have scared her shitless. Apparently that hadn't affected her reflexes, though; she was fast enough to catch even Shalimar off guard. Brennan wasn't sure he liked the effect that Liz was having on Shalimar. There wasn't much he could do about it and he wasn't sure if he really wanted to do something about it. He spent a lot of time with Adam, who was avoiding Liz as well, but for a very different reason. 

The last time he'd seen Mary Elizabeth Braddock, he'd been an overeager, naïve twenty-something with a massive crush on the much older, more experienced woman. Somehow the tables had evened out. They were, at least in a mental timeframe, caught up in age. The torpor had slowed her down enough that she'd aged only a few years during the time she'd been under. His feelings were uncertain, to say the least. She was the one who'd set him on the path to creating Sanctuary, through her unwilling imprisonment by the GSA. He was determined to, well he was determined to do something Neanderthal and short-sighted and very male: he was determined to impress her with his abilities by 'fixing' her genetic difficulties and hoping she'd fall at his feet in gratitude. Not that this was his conscious desire, intellectually he convinced himself that she had no feelings for him in a romantic fashion and was preparing to suffer in silence for an outcome he'd foregone already. Somehow he knew this wasn't quite the right response, but he didn't analyze that feeling too closely. Therefore he avoided her and prayed she didn't notice. For the man of the genius I.Q. this wasn't too terribly smart, but people seldom apply the same common sense to affairs of the heart as they do to normal issues and Adam was not different than average, at least in this respect.

So his heart was pounding in his ears when he approached the sleeping reptile. She had stretched out on a flat rock that had once been a fountain in the pond; she switched the water off and used it to 'bask' on. There was a skylight directly above it; she absorbed the sunlight during the day. He walked up, stopped, and tried to think of a non-intrusive way to wake her up to give her the news. 

"Are ye gonna do somethin' or are ye gonna stand there till kingdom come?" Liz lifted up her head and opened one eye. "Ye've been there for a good thirty seconds, are ye enjoyin' th' view?"

"Always" he said smoothly, covering his nerves with banter "I forgot you've some of the best senses I've ever heard of. You got a minute?"

She grinned, her black tongue flicking in and out lazily "For ye laddie, I've got a million. Whaddaya want?"

"Would you mind volunteering yourself for yet another set of experiments?" He folded his shaking hands behind his back to hide them from her sight. 

"Ye mean ye've managed to come up with a way to fix me don'cha?"

"Yes" he agreed slowly "at least I think so"

"Well then, what are ye waiting for? An engraved invitation perhaps?"

"I…well; it's not a safe procedure. I can give you about an eighty percent chance, maybe less. I'm sorry." He rubbed his forehead and combed his hand through his hair. "If it were anyone else I wouldn't even consider it, but you're a nutcase and'll probably take the chance anyhow"

To his surprise she threw back her head and laughed, a rusty, sandpapery sound "Ye're absolutely right, Curly, I'll take the risks as they come. I dinna think that makes me a nutcase, though, more like a reckless adventurer."

"Yeah" He snorted, "Until something goes wrong and you end up on the wrong side of genetic meltdown."

"Then it'll be." She sat up and curled her legs under her, on the rock "Since when did you become such a bean counter? I remember a lad, who'd take any risk better than even odds and even then, some of them below it."

"He grew up." He extended his hand to help her up, not that she actually needed it, but he was a well trained gentlemen. She grinned at him again, taking his hand and allowing herself to be pulled up. To his surprise, and pleasure, she didn't let go of it, but tugged on it and accompanied him hand-in-hand to the lab. 

"Now, I lay on this contraption and seven hours later I'm good as new?" she asked, as she lay back on the main cot in the lab.

"Well it's not quite that simple, but essentially yes." He tucked a pillow behind the 'curly mop' of her head. 

"Can I sleep through this? It's about midnight, my time." She yawned, revealing her rather wicked looking teeth and forked, black tongue.

"Actually, it's probably better if you do. That's less for me to worry about." He grinned at her impudent flick of the tongue. "With any luck, that's all that'll be involved." 

"Hey now, I can sleep on command. As a matter of fact, sleeping is something I can do without even being commanded to do it."

"Hmnm. One of us will be here when you wake up, depending on when that happens. So just lie back, and relax, this isn't going to hurt a bit."

"Aye that's what they say at the dentists"  

In precisely eight hours twenty-seven minutes and thirty-four seconds from the beginning of the genetic re-sequencing procedure Liz woke up. Her first reaction was to ask 'who turned out the lights?' but this was forestalled by Shalimar gently removing the dark sunglasses that she had 'loaned' her to block the glare of everyday sunlight so it didn't irritate her eyes. 

"Holy Mother of God" she breathed "I'm not cold"

"Nope" Shalimar grinned, "and you're not too hot either."

"Uhh," she slid off the cot and walked around in little circles, shaking out the kinks. "Feels like a brand new me"

"It is," Shalimar motioned to her to follow her into the room adjacent to the lab. Curious, Liz followed and was greeted with a large 3-D representation of her genetic structure. 

"Whoa, that's nasty looking"

"Yup," Shalimar agreed "This is the 'before' photo and this…" She pressed a few buttons on the computer LCD "is the 'after' picture"

"Wow," Liz whistled in appreciation "What's all the green crud?"

"That's the mutated DNA, the feral and the elemental. You see, here on the old strand they just lifted whole blocks on genetic material and forced it into your helix. That's because you're not a New Mutant like the rest of us, we were born with it, and you had to have it forcibly implanted. See look here at the damage to the Genome it caused, but here on the new one, Adam deleted the 'extra' genetic material in the blocks of DNA and repaired the genetic 'damage' that the implantation procedure caused."

"Cool"

"Yeah, way cool" Shalimar smiled "You're still cold blooded, you still have a three chambered heart, you can still smell with your tongue, but you won't get too cold or hot unless the temperature drops or rises dramatically, you won't be so light or sound sensitive, and you don't have webbed toes anymore."

"Damn," Liz looked down at her bare feet and wiggled the now non-webbed toes "and they were useful too, I could swim like a demon."

"Sorry"

"Don't be, I can live without me webbing if I dinna have to be cold all the time" she gave Shal a lopsided grin "I think now that we've got something to celebrate. Is Emma still awake?"

"Yeah, she should be"

"Great, I'll grab some scotch; you can get the chocolate and well meet at Emma's for a nice little get together"

Shalimar smiled; a party at Emma's was always a good idea, especially if Emma didn't know she was having one "Race ya!"


	8. Party at Emma's

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

**__**

**_Rated PG-13 & R-ish for some adult situations and dialogue _**

"My, my that's awfully smart, pity I can't wear it" Emma displayed a deadly sexy black swatch of fabric that passed as a dress, forgoing the heels and hose to better keep her balance. Liz, and the rest of her companions, was in the process of becoming cheerfully drunk. She, Emma, Shalimar and the bottle of first rate scotch were having a little date in Emma's room.

"What makes you shhink you cain't wear it?" Shalimar was more than a little far gone, her eyes slightly glazed and her consonants slightly befuddling her mouth. She was wearing a sum total of a black lace bra and a pair of Brennan's boxers that she got in her laundry pile accidentally and never bothered to return. 

Emma turned in a stationary circle, only slightly unsteady; she was technically the soberest of the three, having drunk the least but she also held her liquor the worst. "Well?"

"I told ye its awfully smart, ye know it as well as I" They were having an impromptu fashion show with the contents of Emma's closet, bottomless pit that it was. "I canna wear it, 'cause ye're too damn tall. I'd hang like I tried on me mum's closet."

"I bet Jesse would have an aneurysm on the spot if you took him out in that" Shalimar nodded knowingly, "or better yet he'd strip you out of it before you got anywhere"

"You think?"

"Lass, he'd throw ye t' th' floor an' have ye right then an' there"

"Hmmm," she admired it in the mirror "It's not too short?"

"a'course its too short. Thas half th' point" Shalimar slurred. She got unsteadily to her feet and, using Liz's head as a balance point staggered over to the open closet. "Hey now! Thish is nice"

"Naw, it's too pale. I'd wash you right out. Give it to Liz, she's green"

"No I'm not. Not anymore. Adam took care of that"

"Thas right: Adam. I'll bet he takes care of you" she leered at Liz slightly "real good care of you. Never seen him this far gone, nope never ever, ever." She was saying it in a slightly sing-song manner, swaying to the rhythm of the words.

"Well I'm not th' only one. Tha' Brennan fellow's been sniffing after ye like ye was a cat in heat"

"Well now," Shal sobered slightly, "he's always been a little …y'know."

"Well good for ye, damn sexy bastard he is. I'll bet he's fantastic"

"I'll be shure to tell you when we get it on." Shal looked at her female friends, and grinned "You'll probably hear it before I even get to you"

"Braggart" Liz grumbled "Lucky lady"

"What about you and Adam? Did you ever…?" 

"What, us? Well not really, we was a bit busy a' th' time an' twenty years apart" Liz rolled over to her back. "Not that I didn't think about it a little"

"A little?" Emma teased

"A lot" Liz whispered "He was so damn hot, still is for that matter"

"Hmm so now we got to get you two alone in a room and lock the doors" Emma grinned wickedly "Lemme think on that for a bit"

"Don't ye dare. I'll have to kill ye, an' I like ye so's it'd be bad"

Snoring suddenly caught both their attentions. Shalimar was peacefully sleeping, sprawled out on the contents of Emma's closet, now on the floor. 

"Damn" said Emma, annoyed "she snores like a saw through a brick wall when she's drunk"

"Best we be sleepin' it off too. Whoo-wheee am I gonna have a head in the morning"

Late the next morning Adam was worrying his pretty little curly head off when his three girls not only skipped breakfast, but were in a fair running to skip lunch as well. Neither of the other men had seen hide nor hair of the ladies. The door to Shalimar's room was standing wide open, she wasn't in there, and neither was Liz in her bedroom. That left only one more door, latched firmly shut. 

"What are they doing in there?" asked Jesse.

"You got me. Who knows what weird woman thing they've got going on" said Brennan, looking nervously at the door.

"No, they're probably trying on each others clothing and talking about us" 

"What makes you say that, Jess?"

"Didn't you ever have a sister? That's what mine always did" offered Jesse. 

"Well I'm going in there" Adam put down his can of Pepsi and started towards the door. Brennan followed and, after a moment pause, so did Jesse.

"Good holy God, what the hell happened in here?"

The room was scattered with bits and pieces of feminine clothing, lacy undergarments and chocolate wrappers. The bottle of scotch carefully propped on the dresser provided all the evidence Adam needed. They'd gotten drunk and had an undoubtedly merry time talking about men.

"What the hell kind of girly ritual is this? Looks like an orgy" Brennan picked up a very brief pair of briefs off the floor that reeked of quality scotch.

"It wanna an orgy" Liz protested, rolling over and over, unable to stop until she knocked into Adam's shins. She looked straight up into his eyes "There wanna any men" She sat up, using Adams' legs for balance "but now that ye mention it, that's not a bad idea"

"GahHH" Emma gagged, fell off her bed, and began staggering in the direction of the bathroom. She was wearing a black dress, caught up around her waist to bare her legs to wandering eyes. 

"Jesse watch her," warned Adam "she's going to throw up. God bless, she can't hold hard liquor. Her body won't metabolize it" Jesse phased through the bathroom wall just in time to help Emma return last night's party to the porcelain throne. 

Liz staggered to her feet; she at least was wearing something, jeans that sagged way too far at the waist and a bra. "Well if ye'd a told me that I'd got her some wine. There was a lovely little Chateau Picard '64 we coulda split"

"Yeah, it's worth more than half the clothes in this room, and that's saying something. I do hope you realize that scotch was a hundred and fifty dollars a fifth and is currently soaking the carpet"

"Well if ye're gonna get plastered ye might as well do it with the good stuff"

"Why did I expect you to say something like that?" He reached around her swaying waist and steadied her, trying very hard not to notice her current state of undress. "C'mon we're going to bed"

"Really? Well ye're bold little Yank." She grinned easily, not at all perturbed at the thought.

"Correction, you are going to bed, to sleep." He wrapped her other arm around his shoulders and started towards the door, passing a still shell-shocked Brennan "Jesse's got Emma and I've got Liz, you mind getting Shalimar to her own bed?" 

Brennan looked at the sleeping feline, all wrapped up in silk and cotton and denim. She was half-bare and still more than a little intoxicated. Taking a deep breath he nodded, "Sure thing, Adam"

"Great" Adam started to make his way to the room Liz had been assigned. She was walking along fairly well, only tripping when it came to the stairs, and then only slightly. When they got to her door she swayed into his arms and latched both hands firmly around his neck before plating a kiss on him that sent the blood rushing from his head straight south. Adam struggled for coherent thought. While this might be his dream come true, he knew damn well that Liz wouldn't think of him in that way unless intoxicated. He struggled to remove her arms from around his neck. "Liz, no, I'm not doing this to you."

"What?" She pried her eyes back open, "Yes ye are, we're goin' t' do this. You think I'm joking?" she moved her hips against him in a manner that made his knees begin to buckle. He moved back, bracketing her wrists with his hands.

"I think you're drunk, I'm not taking advantage of that." He bundled her wrists together, turned her around and shoved her none too gently into the open doorway of her bedroom. "Sleep it off, Liz. I'll be here when you wake up." And he closed the door behind her. Then sagged against the wall, willing his hear to slow back down. It had been so hard to turn her down, but he knew she would have hated him for it. 

An indeterminate amount of time later, Liz woke up with the pounding of her head for her only company. For a second she fancied that it was pounding badly enough that she could physically hear it, but that turned out to be her bedroom door responding to the enthusiastic rapping of someone on the other side. 

"Damn bastard people, why can't they just leave a body in peace?" she rummaged through her medicine closet, digging out an aspirin and a bottle of purified water. Not bothering to step back into the jeans she'd shed casually on the middle of the bedroom floor, Liz opened the door and growled "Whaddaya want?"

"Can I come in?" it was Shalimar, wearing an uncharacteristically large t-shirt and bare feet. 

"Not if ye know what's good for ye" she also noticed the nice purple marks on Shal's neck, that couldn't have been placed there without some outside assistance. 'Damn,' she thought to herself. It looked as if Shalimar had been the one to turn up on the right side of this evening's entertainments.

"C'mon, please? Just help me without making a fuss about it."

"Will I now? All right then lass, in ye go. Just hop up on the bed and take off ye shirt." She winced as Shal removed her shirt and revealed several parallel scratch marks down her back. "Ouch, looks like th' resident elemental has some nasty claws to him, don't it?"

"Yeah, well I didn't really notice until…"

"Until ye came back down to earth and realized ye was bleedin' in some conspicuous places." She now stepped into last night's jeans and pulled a shirt over her head that had drifted to the bedroom floor. "No worries, I can patch ye up"

"Thanks," she gave her the same killer smile that she routinely gave Brennan "I really didn't want to go to Adam, and well I wasn't sure if he'd ah, well, be there"

"You was thinking we'd be in the big king size going at it as well, right?" he blushed, "No worries lass, I'm old enough to be ye're grandmother. There's not much left that can embarrass me. No, we're safe an' sound in our own two beds." She went to her closet to grab her medical bag and grumbled "Through no lack trying on his part"

"Excuse me?"

"Ye'd think that any red blooded man would go nuts if a lady offered herself whole to him, no strings, no nothing. But no, Mr. Self-Righteous Bastard had to go ahead and be noble and throw me back. Damn hypocrite, I hope he rots in hell"

"You mean he…"

"Aye! He did, and it's not like I'm a hag or nothing. I might be on the low side of forty, but I'm still damn good looking. He had not a right to just toss me feelings about like that."

"Well he probably thought you were too drunk to think straight and didn't want to take advantage. I mean, we were all a little plastered." She dumped the antiseptic down Shal's back for a response, "Ahh, what was that for?"

"If I dinna disinfect it, ye'd be running back here tomorrow in a truly pathetic state of being. Quit whining. Besides, men are all alike, thinking we can't make a decision for ourselves. How long did it take Brennan to resist your advances then, eh? Two seconds, mayhap three? If I needed a bit of… liquid encouragement that's none of his business. Flip over."

"Well why don't you tell him that?" she gave Shalimar a withering glare. "It was his decision; the least you could have done was say something!"  

"Aye lass, that it was. I'm just bit grumpy over sleeping by meself this afternoon, that all. What am I saying? You're a woman, you'll see me side of, it not his." She grumbled, "Just tell me one thing, then, do we have a happy cat?"

"Oh yeah, very happy."

"Good, that's all that matters." 

Not quite, thought Shalimar as she left Liz's room, not nearly so. She and Adam had a little talking to he needed to attend. Shalimar trusted Liz, far be it for her to not see to her friends happiness, and not so incidentally the happiness of this kitty cat as well.                  
    


	9. Fears

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

"Hey! Emma!"

"Yeah, what is it Adam?"

"C'mere for a sec." 

Emma shrugged at Jesse, who'd been meditating with her, before gracefully gliding to her feet and climbing the stars to Adam's lab. "What do you need?"

"When Liz went all whacko over the fire thing, what did you sense about the fear?"

"What do you mean? The fear was so…total. It's kind of hard to quantify something that… primal."

"So it was primal?"

"Yes," she said slowly, "Fear itself is a very primal emotion. I imagine it was even worse, because she's a feral and not only are emotions more primal in ferals, but they also have an intense instinctive fear of fire to begin with."

"Can instinct like that be overcome?"

"Sure, we do it a lot. Humans have an instinctive fear of heights. Put a baby on a glass table top and it'll cry instinctively, but we ride in glass elevators all the time and skydive out of planes for fun. Same thing for soldiers or secret service agents, there is an instinctive fear of being shot. People run from bullets. The instructors have to train them to overcome the fear and run towards the bullets." She paced over to a chair in the center of the lab, "You're not thinking of trying to re-train Liz and Shalimar to tolerate fire are you? Feral fears are different, it's like a phobia. It's way too intense."

"Liz, maybe. Shalimar definitely not. I was going over the test results of the genetic re-sequencing procedure. I compared it to Shal's genetic structure, just for backup, and found some…interesting discrepancies." He projected two helixical sections of DNA, color coded for each chemical, onto the wall of the lab. "These genes are the, well, 'instinct' genes. They basically allow the feral to use the inherent feelings of the animal DNA to augment the physical ability."

Emma nodded; you couldn't be a new mutant without having at least a pedestrian understanding of basic genetics. "They're different"

"Yes, very different. On impulse I pulled up the rest of the genetic sequences. Look at Liz and Shal and Brennan all side by side" He pulled up the appropriate genetic strands.

"Wow. That's really interesting."

"Isn't it? Shal and Brennan have almost the exact opposite. She's a C-T-T-G and he's a G-A-A-G. Her instinct is flight, his is fight."

"She runs because she can't control it, he can, so he fights it."

"Exactly, but look at Liz. She's a G-T-A-G. Not quite one and not quite the other. I noticed the difference when I was cleaning up the genes. I'm thinking that her fear isn't instinctive, it's conditioned. She's afraid because she expects to be afraid, but she can control it." 

"You want me to try to break the conditioning?"

"Your specialty is emotions, isn't that what it's all about?"

"Those emotions are pretty damn intense. She's terrified out of her mind over it. How do you plan to sell this Liz? There's no way she'll want to confront it Fear of fear is also pretty instinctive."

"Actually, I was hoping you could do it. I don't think I'm high on her list of favorite people right now." Adam looked a bit sheepish.

"You want me to do it?"

"Please?" He looked into her eyes intensely. She opened the tight fist of her mind, just a bit. That he was sincere, she had no doubt, but she probed delicately into the 'why' of this decision. 

"Why, Adam? Why now?" From the probing, intense look on her face, he knew that she could spot a lie a mile away. 

"I think I've upset her," he took a deep breath "I know I upset her, I just want to give something back. I owe her a lot."

"Adam," Emma said sweetly, putting both elbows on the lab table and gazing intently into his eyes "Let's get one thing straight, you may owe her something, but these feelings have nothing to do with gratitude." She smiled, just as sweetly, when her fearless leader flushed a bright red at her words.

"Well, um, that too"

"Yeah, lots of 'that'." She grinned, "You know I'd never break a confidence Adam, especially to a friend. So let's say as counselor to team leader, I would suggest that two of the team members are having some difficulties with a bit of, let me say it's miscommunication, alright? This miscommunication is having a profound impact on their personal relationship. I would defiantly recommend, that they speak to one another about this, quickly." Her eyes twinkled, "and I'm not talking about Shalimar and Brennan"

"So Liz isn't mad at me?"

"No, Liz is mad at you, but for a reason very different than the one you're thinking about, Ok?"     

 "What do you mean?"

"Talk to her Adam, get it out in the open."

"Emma…"

"That's all I'm going to say. And I'll say it to her, too. Talk to each other."

"You want me to what!" she was basking on the rock in the middle of the indoor pond. Dusk was beginning to fall outside. In other words, it was perfect timing to spring this on Liz. I was just before she was fully awake, but not so asleep that she couldn't concentrate appropriately.

"Just listen ok? Adam cleaned up your genetic structure pretty well, you're as much elemental as you are feral now, and it used to be the other way around. We were looking at it and it dawned on us that the fear of fire is no longer instinctive anymore because you're element is as powerful as the feral. I think he wants to use it as an ace in the hole against Gabriel. But before that happens you need to get over the fear"

"Not in this lifetime" she sat up, and scooted off the rock to stand across from Emma, confrontationally.  

"You're not a pure feral anymore, you're a hybrid. Use it to your advantage." Emma tried to appeal to the doctor in Liz. That was the eminently practical nature of a trauma medic; to use everything you have to the utmost of its potential. She could tell it was working by the thoughtful, slightly interested look in her eyes.

"What, exactly, would this de-conditioning entail?"

"I'd just get you used to seeing flames, controlled flame like a candle. Then we could graduate up to lighting a match, lighting a candle, maybe a campfire or a bar-b-que. Then we could see what the limitations and possibilities you've got as an elemental."

"What does Adam have to say about this?"

"It was his idea."

"Then why isn't he here to persuade me of this?"

"He thinks that because you're mad at him, you wouldn't take him seriously."

"Smart man." 

"Not really, if you two got into it over the fire thing it might just end up clearing the air over whatever's between you two."

"You know what's between us."

"He doesn't. He still thinks it's because he put himself in the position of saying 'no' not the actual saying 'no' itself"

"Idiot"

"Tell him" from the skeptical look she got back Emma could tell that this approach wasn't working "Or slap him if you prefer, just do something other than glare at him across the dinner table" this idea was met with a bit more relish than the other. Emma sighed; Adam was in for a bit of a shock. "I got a candle in my room. We're going to go deal with this fear thing one way or the other." 

"Do we have to?"

"Yes" 

Liz grumbled, but followed in Emma's wake. 

"Hey! Adam!" Brennan called out at he ran up the stairs, "Wait up!"

"Brennan, "Adam smiled "What's up."

"Yeah, um, listen. Shal's getting a little cabin fever, if you get my drift, and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind letting us go out a little tonight."

"Brennan, I really don't want anyone leaving Sanctuary. Especially with Gabriel running loose the way he's been"

"C'mon Adam, Gabriel's up to his neck trying to get the government off of his back for the mall incident, besides, it's not like Shal and I would be asking questions or breaking down doors or anything like that. Just one night out on the town Adam, please?"

"Brennan…" he said warningly.

"It'll give you a chance to talk to Liz" Adam immediately tensed up. Brennan tried another tack. "Listen I've been talking to Shalimar, who's talked to Liz and…"

Why does everyone all of a sudden find my personal life to be of overpowering interest?" Adam exploded furiously, "It's none of your business!"

"Yeah it is," Brennan said softly, "We all care about you Adam. We want things to be perfect for you. We get worried if you're not happy. Until Liz came around you didn't even have a personal life, that's wasn't real healthy." He gave a self-deprecating laugh, "I should be the one talking, but listen to me I think you want to hear this."    

"What is it?" Adam said impatiently.

"She's not mad at you for trying to take advantage of her while she was out of it, she's mad at you for not taking advantage of her while she was out of it."

"What!" He could hardly believe what he was hearing.

"Jesus, Adam what else can I say without being really nasty?  She wanted you to…y'know. You kinda offended her, I mean she hasn't seen a guy for twenty years and the first one she does see pushes her right back into her bedroom? It hurt her feelings, she's been whining about you to Shalimar ever since."

"She was drunk!"

"She wasn't that drunk." Brennan started to feel uncomfortable talking about Adam's sex life; the man was practically his father. "Just apologize, it'll be Ok. Can we go now?"

"Sure, go ahead." 

Adam dropped back into his chair. She was mad at him for saying 'no'? He knew Liz, or at least he thought he knew Liz, she didn't just try to drag just anyone into her room. She didn't drag anyone to her room as far as he could remember. Why him? Did she…like him? Like in a 'thinking about him on a permanent kind of candlelight dinners and flowers and backrubs' way. They had always been comfortable around each other, she'd never been intimidated by his intellect or abilities, heck she'd never been intimidated by anything. He'd had a horrible crush on her, but he was positively certain she'd never felt like that about him. Or had she? He had to find out. He was halfway to her room when he remembered that she wasn't going to be waking up for another hour or so. Thinking that getting a woman out of a sound sleep to ask her if she had feelings about him wasn't a good idea, Adam thought of something else. 


	10. Nighttime Assignation

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Mary Elizabeth Braddock, feral and elemental, was now at this moment trying to conquer one of her most basic fears: that of fire. She had taken Emma's advice to heart. Knowing Gabriel, he wouldn't anticipate her overcoming that fear to use the fire against him. They had an advantage, or at least they would if she could do this.

 She was working on the Sanctuary computer, looking up new and interesting ways to treat blunt-force trauma injuries. Altogether, it wasn't something that she wouldn't do normally, however, the presence of one lit taper, balanced delicately in a lovely brass and glass candlestick, made all the difference. Every once and a while she'd stop her work and just stare at it, watching the fire slowly melt away the wax. The reds and orangey gold's cast a circle of brightness around the silent lab. In the very heart of the intensity the wick burned white-silver and blue, the colors of the fire that she could throw out of her mouth. 

She rubbed a small blister on the palm of her hand; she'd burnt herself with Emma that afternoon. To her surprise, it hadn't sent her screaming in the other direction. She'd hid behind Emma's back, away from the flame, and whimpered like a puppy, but she hadn't run away. Luckily Emma was an understanding soul; she'd held Liz in her arms until the fears had subsided. With anyone else it would have been a very awkward moment, but Emma was a telempath, she knew exactly how it felt and simply accepted Liz's fears. 

Another glob of wax crumbled from the heat of the flame. It dribbled down the smoky glass stem of the candlestick and solidified again in little crater-like droplets on the brass base. Liz caught one droplet on her fingertip; it solidified on her index finger, creating an exact mold of the ridges of her fingerprint. It was an awesome fascination that fed her impressions of fire. Now, after this afternoon, she could look at it without shuddering. She could stand back and admire the terrible, terrible beauty and destructiveness of the flames. She was afraid, any person in their right mind would fear that potential, but it was now tempered with the knowledge that she could control the power, the intensity. 

Absorbed in her musings she almost missed the sounds of one lone gentleman tiptoeing around the corner and approaching the lab. Almost was the operative word in that thought, she could still hear a fly on the wall from twenty meters away, genetic re-sequencing or no. Flicking her black, super-sensitive tongue in and out of her mouth rapidly she pulled the pheromones roughly over the Jacobson's organ on the roof of her mouth. The scent was of her dear friend Adam, trying unsuccessfully to sneak up on her in the privacy of the lab. This reeked of a set-up encounter; after all it wasn't natural for Adam to be up and walking around at midnight on a Saturday. 

"Ye know that ye canna sneak up me" she said conversationally to the computer screen standing in front of her, still typing up her latest notes and observations.

"Humor me, will ya?" his voice echoed in the dark, nearly empty lab.

"If ye insist" she continued typing, not breaking her rhythm for the conversation.  

"I do" he said softly.

He kept sneaking, quietly, into the lab. If she'd been anyone else, in all likelihood, she wouldn't have heard anything. He stepped up, and gently, as if she was porcelain and would shatter at a careless touch, he wrapped his arms around her waist and tucked his chin onto her shoulder. 

"Well now, this is nice." Liz leaned away from her work, into his arms. "Are we trying to lull me into tranquility?"

"Is it working?" he whispered into her neck.

"Aye," she grinned, "'Tis indeed working, well I'd say"

"I talked with Brennan this afternoon"

"Brennan?" she swiveled on her barstool to look him squarely in the eyes, "What does he have to do with anything?"

"Well Brennan talks to Shalimar, seeing as they're…"

"Together" she said delicately.

"Yes, together. And Shalimar talks to you, seeing as you're friends. So from that I managed to deduce that when you told Shalimar why you were angry, she told Brennan, and Brennan, being the kind man that he is, told me."

"Did he now?" she murmured, more than halfway entranced in the feeling of his fingers moving against her back. 

"Mmmm, yup. Most definitely, I owed him a night out on the town." He ginned.

"Which just happens to be why no one but you and I are awake in Sanctuary tonight?"

"Maybe" She pulled herself away slightly, taking his hands into her own, and gave him a more serious, sober look.

"I hope ye dinna plan t' just pick me up and drag me off t' ye bed Adam, dearest. I might have made that invitation half-pissed as I was, but I still dinna just jump around t' a man's room." She smiled warmly "Not like an overeager twenty-something that canna wait to rip up the sheets."

"Like a couple of twenty-something's that are currently out painting the town red tonight?"

"Well now" she slid off the barstool and pulled his hands, still caught up in hers, around her waist. "Nothing wrong with that, just not my style, that's all."

"Not my style either." He snuggled her closer, "Hey, nice candlestick."

"Thanks, its Emma's"

"I know I gave it to her."

"So she said. I think ye're right about that fear thing, dearest, all it took was a few hours this afternoon an' I can handle it like I was never afraid of it."

"Did she tell you what my idea was about Gabriel and the fire?"

"Not really, but I kinda get that drift. We surprise him with me not being as afraid of th' fire as I usually am."

"That and I was also thinking about trying to surprise him at his own little game."

"Meaning…what?" he voice was muffled in his shoulder, as he walked her backwards over to the sofa, near the eating area, upstairs.

"Meaning, remember how you got out of the Genomex complex?"

"Yes, ye want me t' go back in through the ventilation shaft."

"Yeah, I think that next time Mr. Ashlock tries to assert the superiority of mutant-kind over humanity we should be waiting in the wings with a little assertion of superiority of our own." He sat and pulled her onto his lap, laying her out over the sofa and tucking her head into the crook of his neck.

"Like a fireball up his ass?" she squirmed, trying to find a comfortable spot on his chest. She flicked her tongue out, over his chin, and deliberately left it out to tickle him before bringing it back in. 

"Something like that" he let her squirm until she found her niche, and rubbed the spot on his chin that she'd tickled. "You know I've had some interesting ideas about that tongue of yours."

"Oh have ye, now?" she said archly, flicking the aforementioned organ in and out rapidly and tickling his chin again. 

"Yes. I had a horrible crush on you, did you know that?" He couldn't believe he was saying this, he'd come across as a half-witted, obsessive and incredibly teenage. 

"Did ye now?" she turned around in his arms, looking impossibly pleased with herself. "Well, I feel a bit better, then. Ye know ye pricked me pride in telling me off like ye did. I wouldn't a been quite so ticked if ye hadn't a pricked me pride." She said it lightly, but he could feel the tension in her back and neck as she spoke. 

"If it makes you feel any better, I was thinking that there was no way you would have done what you did if you hadn't been um, intoxicated."

"What, ye think ye're not a man to drag off inna bed?" at his more than slightly embarrassed look, she stroked his chest in a comforting fashion, "Adam, ye're a perfectly wonderful man t' drag off t' bed, believe me, have a little confidence in ye'self."

"I guess I'll have to, won't I?" He stroked her neck, sending little shivers down her back and making her purr with pleasure. "I think that there are more interesting things to do with our time than talk about Gabriel, don't you?"

"Hmmm? Oh yes, very much so, very much so."

 Sometime near one in the morning Brennan and Shalimar arrived back in Sanctuary. They were giggling, half-dizzy with cheap beer and the flush of new love. Trying to quietly enter the main atrium, not waking anyone, they climbed the stairs and stopped shortly at the sight of Adam, fearless leader of Mutant X, and Liz, impudent trauma medic, tangled around each other on the sofa. Liz's head lifted, she was on top of their fearless leader, as he snored the evening away. 

Shalimar let her eyes glow feral yellow, her iris iridescent in the low light. Predictably Liz let her eyes glow back, greenish gold, her posture curiously possessive of the man sleeping softly underneath her. Brennan let the girls communicate silently, it was almost creepy, the two women glowing at each other. 

Whatever message they wanted to send each other was sent, Shalimar tugged him back to their room, rather it was her room, but the room that they'd shared for the past few days. 

"What was that all about?" he asked, half-creeped from the exchange. 

"What… Liz? Oh, she and Adam resolved their little issues. I think that we're going to have a very happy Adam."

"And you got all that from staring at each other?"

"Yeah, why? Got a problem with that?"

"Women," he grumbled.


	11. Oops We Did It Again!

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Mary Elizabeth dropped from the invisible Double Helix to the roof of the Genomex complex. She rolled and hid behind an exhaust pipe on the roof. Invisibly the Helix skated away from the drop site; they were on their way to the latest disturbance that The Strand was involved in. This time they'd burst into a safe house of the other New Mutants. Although time was critical, Adam postponed his mission just long enough to put Mary Elizabeth in a position to put a humongous damper on Gabriel Ashlock's day.

Following the same trail that she'd used to get out of the building in the first place, Liz found herself next to the main furnace of the Genomex building. Turning on her camera glasses, she made sure that Adam, still in the Helix, but now over the site of the safe house, could see everything she saw.

"Ok, from the furnace room, take the left tunnel and go about fifty meters and turn right at the end of it"

"Aye Adam, by the by, are you sure that they're not gonna find me? Sociopath he might be, but Gabriel's no idiot. He'll know that I can use these air ducts to sneak up on him. What's to keep him from busting one open and dragging me out?"

"Well, with any luck, he'll be too busy keeping an eye on us here to worry about you over there. That is providing he even noticed you entering the building, which I highly doubt."

"Whatever you say, love, just don't blame me if I get a bit twitchy."

"Don't worry; everything is going according to plan."

And it was, for once it seemed as if Mutant X had gotten the drop on The Strand. Brannan, Jesse, Shalimar and Emma were all kicking some major butt over in the safe house. The other new mutants, the ones Mutant X were protecting got away cleanly in one of the emergency escape craft, piloted by Jesse. Shalimar and Brennan fought back to back, taking down as many of The Strand as possible. 

Emma was using her sleepy-bolts to conk out any person that got in her way. This new addition to her telempathic arsenal seemed to be invaluable, until she became too involved in her targeting to watch her back. Shalimar yelled out a warning, but it was too late. 

One of the Strand members, previously taken out by an electrical shock from Brennan's indoor lightening storm, reached from behind. He had a section of metal pipe in his hand, gleaned from the debris that lettered the floor during the fight. One swipe and the oblivious Emma dropped like a stone. Shalimar, with the quicksilver reflexes of an augmented feral, tried to get to Emma. 

"No dice, bitch." Growled the mutant from The Strand, he reached deep inside himself and 'threw' out a wall of force that knocked everyone in the room but him off of their feet. 

Recovering from his electrical shock quickly, the mutant from The Strand slung Emma over his shoulder and hopped into one of the black vehicles he'd arrived in and drove off. The other mutants melted back into the night. 

Apparently distraught, Shalimar and Brennan found their way back to the Helix and limped home to lick their wounds and try again. Back in his 'acquired' office Mr. Ashlock sighed, a wide smile splitting his face, and mentally ticked off a check in his head. 

"The Strand: one. Mutant X: zero"

Oblivious to the possibility that his building might have been infiltrated, Gabriel personally attended the arrival of Emma deLauro at the Genomex complex. That gave Mary Elizabeth the chance she needed to crawl out of the air system and into Ashlock's office. She pulled a computer disc form the thigh pocket of her urban camouflage gear and roughly shoved it into the computer on his desktop.

"Gently, gently, it's only plastic and silicon."

"Screw that, love, this is insane. All they need to do is look up and I'm totally busted." She ducked down, from his desk and half-hid in the knee space on the back.

"Relax, I've got everything timed. Just do what we talked about and everything will go smoothly."

"I'm worried about her, love, the man's a sociopath. He could do anything."

"No," Adam said patiently, "He'll only do what he thinks will gain him the most."

"Like that's reassuring"

"Good Evening Miss deLauro" Gabriel was a charming man, no matter what she knew he did and could still do to her she had to admit that he was a charming man. 

"Fuck you, bastard" Emma cursed and struggled against her captors. 

"My, my, didn't that Adam ever teach you ladies manners? I recall Miss Fox also saying something of the like when I briefly met her aquaintance."

"Yeah, well we got her back. They're going to come back for me, Ashlock, I won't stay here."

"You're right. At least about one thing. They will be coming to get you." He gestured to a mutant, standing a polite two steps to the rear. "Miss Reynolds here has so very kindly offered to act as your body double for the duration of your stay here. When you're friends come back to fetch you, they will only think that it is the real Emma deLauro that they have rescued." He smiled the vacant, insane smile of a true psychopath on the loose form the funny farm.

Miss Reynolds's skin seemed to ripple, then shift. Within seconds her entire body shifted into an exact mimic of Emma's features, right down to the handcuffs and slightly bloody spot on the back of her head. 

"Good day, Miss deLauro. I hope you have a nice stay in pod storage."

True to form Emma struggled vainly to free herself. The doctors that crowded around her filled a needle with a clear, slightly viscous liquid. No matter what she'd done, Emma now watched as the contents of the syringe slowly seeped into her body. She struggled no more.

The medical personnel stuffed her limp body into a pod, setting the stasis cycle and shooting it off, deep into pod storage. Watching on Gabriel's computer screen Liz memorized the pod slot Emma had been assigned, before finishing off the program that Adam had created for the Genomex computers. She quietly slipped back into the air duct, meticulously fastening the grill behind her. 

Gabriel settled back into his office chair, content to wait for Mutant X to make their predictable rescue attempt. While he sipped expensive Scotch Whiskey his former teacher, now foe, slipped through the bowels of the Genomex air supply. Landing lightly on the walkway above the pod storage room Emma was in, Liz scented her surroundings. No one had been there in years. No one, that is, but Emma.

Punching a few buttons on the pod cover, Liz encouraged the hermetically sealed pod to open. She then reached in to pull the still unconscious Emma out of the pod. 

"Now what, O Brilliant One, she's been knocked out silly."

"Damn, I wasn't expecting them to drug her as well. Come back up to the roof, we'll make a transfer when the Helix gets back there."

"Sorry to rain on ye parade, love, but there's no way in hell I can get this lass up the pipes, even if she was awake."

"Crap, Ok, scratch the plan. We'll still come and 'rescue' the decoy we'll grab the real one too. Can you get to the armory from here?"

"What do you want me to do? Shoot him? That won't work, he can block them, I thought we was going to fry him?"

"No, the rifles have been modified to inject sub-dermal governors. You'll only get one clear shot, make it count."

"That's plan B! What the hell have ye been smoking?"

"Well have you got a better idea?"

Looking around the room, full of pods, a bulb lit up in her head. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do"

Brennan, in the Helix with Shalimar and Jesse, was shaking to his very core. The 'plans' they'd made to capture Gabriel and put Genomex out of business in one fell swoop had crumbled to dust. Now it was all they could do to salvage the situation and rescue their two comrades still stuck in the Genomex building. Adam hadn't told him what the new plan was; all that he'd told them was that Liz was taking care of everything. They needed to find the real Emma and get the hell out. Blowing a hole in the roof of Genomex, he decided to do just that. 

It was total chaos, Gabriel had, of course anticipated the attack, but he wanted to give the illusion of resistance so that they'd swallow the bait. That was how he ended up holding the decoy Emma with a gun to her head and making wild threats. At the last second she was supposed to 'break free' and join her 'friends' before they made their escape. Or so they thought. It was all going according to plan when from the rafters of the ruined ceiling, a voice penetrated the tense silence of the hostage negotiation. 

"Hey pea-brain" he recognized that brogue; it was his old teacher, Mary Elizabeth. She was hanging from the rafters, upside down from her knees. Mutant X and Strand alike stared at the ceiling in suspense. She shook herself loose and dropped in an acrobatic aerial maneuver to the floor. "It seems as if ye passed petty dictator 101, but ye've forgot the most important rule of commando school, haven't ye."

"What do you mean?" Now he was beginning to sweat, how long had she been unaccounted for? 

"Ye've always got to protect ye're perimeter, lad. Or nasty things like me'll come an' bite ye in the ass. Especially when ye least expect it. So why dinna ye put down Miss Reynolds and prepare ye'self for the real battle."

"You and what army?" he bluffed, ice trickled down his spine. She knew, and if she knew then they knew, and if they knew this entire action had been a set-up. Sure enough the Mutant X team had inched away, they were now jumping for the rafters and there was no one there to stop them. 

"Oh not my army, lad, I dinna have one, but I believe Mason Eckhart and the GSA have a score to settle, don't ye think?"

At her words GSA agents, led by a slightly wobbly, but functional Eckhart, armed with sub-dermal governors started firing repeated rounds at Gabriel Ashlock. Too surprised to do anything, he fell helplessly to his knees. Many of the members of The Strand fell also. 

First to the helix was Liz, for although she was the furthest away she was also the fastest. Then Jesse, then, tragically, was Brennan carrying a bloody Shalimar.

"What the hell happened?" Liz shouted as she immediately began to treat the multiple gunshot wounds. 

"Damn GSA, they started firing on us when they finished with The Strand, Shal jumped in front of them." 

"Well don't just stand there, idiot, get us home! Now! I canna treat her proper in a bloody jet for God sake!" 

Adam could do no more than watch. He knew that, however long she'd been out of the loop; Liz's hands knew what they were doing. He'd never claimed to be a surgeon. He didn't even try to butt in and help, leaving that job to Jesse, whom Liz had been personally training. He kept an eye on Emma, whom Liz had returned the moment the Helix had landed. Jesse and Liz were covered in blood when they landed the Helix in Sanctuary. They barged right into Liz's room, because she'd slowly been acquiring the proper supplies to treat trauma victims and storing them in her closet. All that was left for him and the other members of Mutant X was to wait.

  
            


	12. El Fin

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Five hours later, Liz emerged from her room. The makeshift surgical garments stained liberally in blood, "Anyone here A positive?"

"I am," said a now fully recovered Emma.

"Come here," she pulled a needle and bag from her pocket and swabbed Emma's arm, preparatory to inserting the needle. "Is there any more of that junk in ye're system, the sedative fluid?"

"No," said Adam, "I flushed it out myself."

"Then I'm to assume ye're a healthy soul." Liz addressed Emma again. 

"Yeah, nothing but a cold in the past year"

"Alright, c'mon, she needs a transfusion and I've run out of blood in storage"

"Ok"

Another half-hour went by with nothing but muffled voices under the door. Liz came back out again, this time supporting a slightly woozy Emma. "She's good to go, get her some sugar and some liquids." Liz peeled off her mask and her bloodstained gloves. 

"Is Shal Ok?" asked Brennan hoarsely

"Define 'Ok', lad" Liz scattered her gloves and began on the scrubs she'd hastily pulled on, "She's stable, for the moment. Lots of blood loss. I fished out th' bullets, patched up th' damage, but it remains to be seen if she'll make the rest of the day. If she does I'll give her a fifty-fifty of surviving. Jesse's in there you'd want to relieve him, we're falling asleep on our feet, though." She dropped the garments where she stood, and marched off.

"Hey Liz, where are you going?"

"Bed," she said shortly, and moments later Adam heard the door to his bedroom slam shut. 

"That answers that question," he found a surgical garment and pulled it on. The rest of the day he spent watchfully at Shalimar's side. The heart monitor was slow but steady, but her respiration sagged a few times, nearly leading to coronary failure on his part, but everything evened out and by the end of the evening she was still breathing.

Liz was almost obsessive. For the next three days she wasn't more than five feet from Shalimar's side. Sometimes Jesse could persuade her to nap while he monitored the machines that were keeping Shal alive, but mostly she sat there and cursed at herself in as many languages as she could. Emma said it was guilt, partly survivor's guilt and partly guilt that she'd been responsible for the whole mess in the first place. Adam tried to talk her out of it, but she just shouted incomprehensibly in an incredibly thick accent and stalked off, saying that she was the only one who had the knowledge to care for Shalimar properly, a statement no one argued with. 

Brennan took it upon himself to keep Liz fed and watered on a semi-regular basis, when he too wasn't blaming himself for the situation. Between the two of them Adam was actually surprised, they hadn't really gotten along that well but once they got over the stage of screaming at each other over the whole thing, they were quickly becoming, if not friends, then respectful colleagues.

Which is why, when Shalimar finally woke up from the drug induced daze, Brennan first kissed her senseless, and then went to head off Liz, who'd got the notion in her head that she was no longer needed and was now trying to leave. 

"…and ye get ye're bloody mitts off a' me ye black hearted scoundrel or I'll knock ye so hard the ghost of Widow Clarence and her nine blind orphan children will look up and down the country an' still won't find all the pieces!" Adam was in the process of convincing Liz to stay, an unsuccessful attempt to say the least.

All Brennan said was "Shal's awake"

That was all he needed to say, it galvanized the entire team into action. The four of them somehow managed to squeeze themselves into Liz's old bedroom without jarring any of the equipment. 

"Hey" she said softly, "how long was I out of it?"

"Four days lass, ye've lost a bit of blood" when Shal would have sat up, "no, no, no, lass, ye'll jar the stitches." 

"Ugh, you get the number of the semi that ran me over?"

"Aye, his name was Mason Eckhart, an' he pumped four into ye afore we got out. Feral ye may be, bulletproof ye're not." When Shal chuckled appreciatively, Liz smiled back "Well looks like me job here is done…"

"Shal tell her that she needs to stay. That it's not her fault. That she doesn't need to leave the team."

"Leave!" Shal turned to Liz, "You're not going anywhere! Not if I have anything to say about it."

"I almost got ye killed!"

"You damn well saved my life!" Shal glared at her, with her best growl and glowing golden eyes "I know there's no one but you who can treat a gunshot trauma, I'm alive because of you! You aren't going anywhere!"  

"She's right," Adam slid arms around Liz, a rarity, even now when everyone knew that Adam and Liz was a couple they rarely showed affection in public. "We need you to stay." She tried to pull out of his embrace, but he held her tightly "I need you to stay."  

"Yeah, who else could have got me out of the pods?" Emma joined the opinion.

"Or trained me to handle a trauma case?" added Jesse.

"Hell," said Brennan gruffly, "I don't even mind if you hang around, we need a decent doctor," he shrugged apologetically "no offense Adam."

"Oh crap, ye've made me cry." She buried her face in Adam's shoulder, who winked at Brennan. "All right then, but on your head it be."   She dried her tears on Adam's shirt. "Now all of ye scat. The patient needs peace an' quiet not a hullabaloo. Go on! Scat!"

They scatted, but with a smile. The team was back on track. 


End file.
